How good of an all band antenna (80-10 mtrs) would a Hustler 6 BTV with a SGC-237 auto tuner mounted at the base be? My antenna is elevated and bandwidth on 40 isn't great enough to cover the digital and phone sections, it's even narrower on 80. The SGC literature indicates that the length is fine, I just don't know if doing this with 100 watts would stress anything.

I own both already and am paring down the antenna farm in hopes of selling this QTH - can you believe it some folks don't find the horizontal loop a work of art? LOL. I just wonder if running the remote 12 vdc power cable to the vertical is worth the effort.

set up the hustler as in the directions as a verticle. use the 237 on a longer wire ( say 50 feet) with a mostly horizontal run. like an inverted l. now you can uise the 6btv as a vert antenna and the sgc will be a great 10-160 horizontal antenna...

I've used a 5-BTV with a tuner to roam the full band width of the band with no problems, but it does reduce the power, presumably from heat dissipation. Power will be reduced by 30% or more moving from 75 to 80m.

The antenna you mentioned when properly installed and adjusted per the manufacturer instructions does not need an antenna tuner at all.

IF you are having SWR problems there was a screw up somewhere along on the measurement and installation. You have to follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer.

Also by the way the 6 band version with 80 meters is a waste of money in that the 80 meter band is going to suck because the band width is just too damn small to be of any practical use unless you want to use just ONE single frequency.

Stick with the 10 thru 40 meter version and put up a good 80 meter dipole if you want an 80 meter antenna.

> N5LRZ wrote:... the 6 band version with 80 meters is a waste of money in that the 80 meter band is going to suck because the band width is just too damn small to be of any practical use unless you want to use just ONE single frequency. <

That's the problem that attempts to use an autotuner as an acceptable solution. Sacrificing half of one's power (1/2 S-unit) in order to work CW on 80m seems reasonable to me since 50w CW works pretty well.--73, Cecil, w5dxp.com

Logged

My antenna says, "What makes me happy is when the tuner is adjusted for maximum available current through my radiation resistance!" 73, Cecil, w5dxp.com

If you connect the tuner ground to the radials and output to the antenna it should work fine to expand the 80/40M coverage. Just don't try to use the tuner to force the antenna outside the ham bands or to a band it is not designed to cover or you may be buying some new traps.

You could also use the tuner inside the shack (ground to coax shield and output to center conductor) for this particular application. The loss in the coax will not be terribly high because the SWR for that antenna will probably never get above 5:1 or so on any band.

A "PROPER" quarter wave length for 80 meters depending on the design frequency is going to be about 65 feet long.

Your antenna is just over 33 ft long approx of actual antenna length. NOW NOTE that this is only HALF the proper length for a proper quarter wave antenna. Such an antenna is going to suck scum at the bottom of the waste treatment plant compared to a proper full size and properly installed 80 meter vertical (with at least 64 full quarter wave ground radials) or a full length 80 meter half wave dipole (approx 120 to 130 feet long).

IF the antenna you can put up is going to suck pond scum the DO NOT put up the antenna. Compromise antennas yield compromise results. NEVER compromise.

Taking that his first paragraph is right, it is another reason why not using the auto tuner is a wise decision.

Based on the second paragraph. Coax already has some loss to it and by adding a high SWR on top of that the loss internal of the transmission line will be even greater and probably very significant.

IF IF IF the original poster wants an all band vertical antenna then he and or she should look into the GAP Line of antennas or similar multiband in the air antennas that do not require any kind of ground radials.

Compromise is OK with me - in 50+ years of hamming, I rarely have had perfection on the low HF bands. If you can make enjoyable contacts, that's what it's about.I get into the 160M contests with a Valor PHF-160B - a rubber duck for 160 if there ever was one. But I can make contacts out to 1000 miles or so - about the same as I do 6 meters with a 3 el beam on a good day.relax and enjoy the ride - if you can get the antenna to load and make some contacts, don't stress over the imperfect situation!

"Such an antenna is going to suck scum at the bottom of the waste treatment plant compared to a proper full size and properly installed 80 meter vertical (with at least 64 full quarter wave ground radials"

False.

If you happened to have 64 1/4 wave ground radials and a reasonable Q loading coil, especially one somewhere up on the antenna, a 33 foot vertical on 80m is going to perform within a fraction of a dB of the 1/4 wave vertical, with the only disadvantage being the narrow bandwidth. That's hardly sucking scum. Whether you can do that with a 6BTV in *particular* and an autotuner for bandwidth widening without it "sucking pond scum," well, to know that we'd have to know your definition of "sucking scum," and I'm not too familiar with that unit of measurement.

We don't know what YPJ's radial field is and if his bandwidth on 80m is painfully narrow, it's probably not too bad of a system.

But we get from you these technically meaningless "right and proper" arguments that may very well amount to you telling people "if you can't get 0.7 dB more, f*** it, don't put up the antenna." These arguments about pond scum suggest that you don't really know about what shortening an antenna does to it. You can get very close to full 1/4 wave performance with a 1/8th wave antenna.

"IF IF IF the original poster wants an all band vertical antenna then he and or she should look into the GAP Line of antennas or similar multiband in the air antennas that do not require any kind of ground radials."

Really? 'Cause I've heard that a lot of the Gap like are like 20dB down from a dipole or full size vertical on 80m. Only having that one long radial (the coax) will do that to ya.

If you want to be a crusty pain in the, as you would probably put it, "azz," about antenna performance, could you at least do your homework so you can put dB numbers on N5LRZ's "forbidden performance zone"?

I'm getting worried you're going to come put a pin in my coax if I don't meet your efficiency criteria, but I don't know what they are.

You know I run a 1/8th wave vertical on 160m right? And you know that it's got this little teeny tiny radial system, right? And you know I only run 100W to it, and probably have 5dB of ground loss, and probably run 30W ERP right? And none of the Europeans giving me 579 reports really seem to get as mad about that as I expect you would.

Maybe I'm "pizzing off" the ones who give me 339's though, so you better hurry up and put me in my place with one of your "right and proper" lectures.

I'm feeding a 45 ft piece of vertical wire with a MFJ929 in an ammo box out at the antenna and it works nicely. Your antenna should work very well using that setup as well. I don't think the 237 is really rated at 100W however but I don't know how critical that is.

I use the coax to run the 12V out to the tuner. Here is a DC injector scheme cooked up by AD5X

To some antennas are engineering and to others they are religion (as in taken on faith). "Right and Proper" sounds more like a statement of religion than engineering. Quoting "dB" and relative efficiencies sounds move like engineering than religion.

Given his nonsense I doubt LRZ ever built a antenna in his life but he probably did read something about it once in QST

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